Easy Truth

Putting aside the debate over mind and concsiousness etc.  I believe that a claim to the existence of any X where X has no causal interactions no causal consequences in reality is literally unknowable, because it cannot be detected or perceived even indirectly.  For that something to cause the kinds of changes on the brain/mind which constitutes memory of it or thinking of it or anything in consequence of it, it first must be causal.  Otherwise it would not have any impact on the identity of the mind and one would never know of it.  As such, the claim is an arbitrary assertion.  Only mystic revelation would explain how one could allegedly gain knowledge of an acausal existent.

@epistemologue: Great post, 
Of course there is a sense where the following is true, and yet the only point and purpose of virtue is to achieve certain outcomes. So, I think this needs a reformulation that does not say "completely" separate. There's a separation, but also a tight relationship. 
You're also right that it's important to set the right goals. This is something humans have struggled with: you see it in the quarrel between the Epicureans and the Stoics. Should you set goals that are lofty, where you have to struggle to reach them, or should to take life easy setting easy goals that let you coast through life? And, what when you fail at some lofty goal? How do you keep perspective that you made the right choice compared to the guy who is coasting? Particularly, what if such failures are routine: does that mean that you should keep aiming just as high and keep failing, or does it mean you need to aim for more realistic goals?
Original Buddhism also struggles with this and concludes -- correctly -- that the source of sadness in life is that we value things, but then lose them or do not get them. So, their original solution is: value less. A counter-argument is that happiness is the other side of sadness. The reason we are happy is that we value things and then gain them. So, cutting off values may reduce sadness, but it also reduces happiness. The link between outcome and happiness is not to be sneered at.
It is true that people can be fundamentally happy and yet go through bad patches. However, feelings of depression come from thinking your life is one huge bad patch. And, a further issue is that some people will deflect the source away from themselves and their own choices, and blame the world. e.g.  "... because of all those other people out there, my life is going to be one big bad patch".
It's not an easy balance: between ambition and acceptance.

A guy named Bob wakes up in the morning. Throughout the day, he makes various choices, including making a to-do list, working on his music album, ordering Chinese food, unwinding with his girlfriend, reading a novel for relaxation. What precedes and motivates those choices? A desire for them, either as ends in themselves (the pleasure they give him) or as a means to another value, or anything in between. 
Now, why does he desire them? If you answered, "because Man's life is the standard of moral value, and his own life is his moral purpose" you are ipso facto advocating intrinsicism. To paraphrase something I wrote in another thread, you're turning the metaphysicaly given into a god, the way Spinoza did, then giving moral significance to your obedience to the metaphysicaly given. "You exist, therefore: if you want to live, you're moral. If you don't, you're rotten."
You can't say "I choose to live because it's moral". You're moral because you choose to live. 
On the same note, it's wrong to say "I choose to live because of so-and-so metaphysical fact", but you can say "I want to live, and although there's no categorical imperative telling me to live - after all, morality is my servant, not the other way around - my choice is not a whim or arbitrary, but rooted in the fact that I am a living being, i.e. justified by my identity or nature, not by a moral code."
This is why Peikoff stresses in his OPAR seminar that this choice is both pre-moral and justified.

How did we discover mathematical infinity? We didn't count to it; the concept of "infinity" MEANS that you can never do that. Rather, we inferred it from the knowledge that every single number is 1 smaller than the next number. Whether it's 5 or 50000000000000, you can always add 1.

Since you can always add 1 to any number, for there to be a biggest number would mean that numbers!=numbers; A!=A. That's not possible (the very bottom line at all times and in all things is that A=A), so you will never be able to count all of the numbers.
An infinite quantity is an unbounded quantity.

We can't positively prove infinity, ever, about anything, because that would be trying to prove a negative. What we can do (as we did in mathematics) is to prove that the possibility of any upper bound whatsoever, on whatever, is not possible.

How?

For space, wherever I'm at I can always move to a spot that's one foot in any direction. For time, whatever moment I remember, there was always a moment before and a moment afterwards.
These do not constitute a refutation of any boundaries to space and time, within our modern context of knowledge, because we (by which I refer to people far smarter than me) have realized that these facts could be logically consistent with certain geometrically bizarre boundaries, if they were large enough. These facts do, however, demonstrate the sort of thing we need to look for in order to sensibly reason about infinities.

If you want that knowledge then you've got to think about it recursively.

The principles of structural engineering apply equally to buildings that stand and buildings that fall.   Rand's principles of concept formation apply to both concepts that are valid and concepts that are not valid.  

In pursuit of the Identification of Identity.

The essence of the law of identity is; that a thing is what it is.

In my backyard is nearly 60 tons of rock. Each rock is itself. Each rock has its own shape. Each rock has its own weight. Each rock has its own color. Each rock has its own location. Every property or characteristic that has been discovered about rocks, to date, each rock in my backyard has independently of the others.

An average lawn that had 320 blades of grass per square inch would have 46,080 blades of grass in a square foot.

Since the ‘average’ American lawn is 8,712 square feet, there would be approximately 401,448,960 blades of grass in the ‘average’ sized American lawn.

Each blade of grass is itself. Each blade of grass has its own shape, length, width, thickness, color, location, etc. Every property or characteristic that has been discovered about grass, to date, each blade of grass in my yard has independently of the others.

The same conclusion can be drawn of trees, birds, apples, dishes, silverware, glasses, and of each and every other entity that exists.

A word is an auditory, visual symbol. A symbol is something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship, association, convention, or accidental resemblance. In the case of a word, it is a symbol for a concept.

Each word is itself. Each word has its own letters, definition, etc. Every other property or characteristic that has been discovered about words, to day, each word has independently of the others. The word, “word” has been used six times in this paragraph. Each of the six instances has its own unique instance of the letters that comprise it, its own unique location within the paragraph, and every other property, discovered and undiscovered.

Each and every concept has its own properties, known and unknown.

The concept rock allows me to refer to each one of the hundreds of rocks in my backyard individually. I could point to indicate a specific rock to mean the specific rock I pointed to. When I indicate the rock that serves as a step off the back porch, it has its own unique shape, weight, color and location. When I refer to the word “rock”, which appears seven times in the first paragraph, each one is its own unique instance with it’s specific properties. When I refer to the “concept of rock” it has its own unique properties. The rock which serves as a step off my back porch, is an instance of one of the percepts I used to “fortify” my concept of rock,

As a symbol, I can use the word rock to identify a new percept of a rock and integrate it in with my current concept of rock. As such, rock refers to every rock I’ve ever encountered, every rock that has ever been, and every rock that is, or will be.

To state: a thing is what it is, integrates each rock is itself, each blade of grass is itself, each word is itself, each concept is itself, etc., into a single propositional principle: A is A There is just no way, using reason, to get around it.

Gregory S. Lewis

I'm sorry but this seems nonsensical and prone to context dropping.  Surely a man's moral standard cannot be Man's life, as in Mankind's life, that isn't practicable or even possible even if one could make sense of it. Certainly understanding general principles of human exercise and diet etc are useful in determining right and wrong from the standpoint of activity and eating but only as a rough first approximation.  One must act in the context of ones own particular life but one's own person, taking his joint condition or seafood allergies into account to determine what is beneficial to his life and what is inimical to it.

Be very careful analyzing this statement.
Rand says, and she is always careful with her use of words in a way which conveys her exact meaning, that in an emergency "situation", "no one" could "prescribe" what action is appropriate.
She is not saying that the person in the context cannot or should not act nor that no standard applies.  She could have stated that in such emergency situations:
1. "No one can determine what action is appropriate."   She DID NOT.
2. "It would be impossible for the person in the situation to determine what action is appropriate."  She DID NOT.
3. "the standard of morality no longer serves as any guide for what action is appropriate."  She DID NOT
Her answer to all lifeboat "questions" ... [[note these are more often than not contextually incomplete, treating the particular person as though he/she were an "any man", as if there were ONE right answer to such a question]]... is that
"Moral rules cannot be prescribed for these situations, because only -life- is the basis on which to establish a moral code..."
Rand here is speaking in the context of moral principles, like any principle, e.g. scientific etc. is meant to have general application to a large number of contexts.  This is why such any particular principle exists.  Such achieves, under normal circumstances, a degree of mental economy.  A principle as part of a code (a limited number of prescribed - i.e. determined and set down "previously" - rules/principles) enables an actor to assess a common situation as falling within the prevue of the principle so as to apply it without over complicating the decision.  Principles are absolute contextually. 
Principles are useful, in fact indispensable because not every scientific or moral context should be approached de novo, not every problem is a dilemma and need to be strenuously though through from scratch. A man would be brought to his mental knees if he had to proceed without principle and rethink everything in every context all the time... this is why codes and principles are rational and useful.  Having principles for general application to common contexts does not however obviate the necessity of rationality and contextual judgment in contexts where the principle is no longer applicable.  There still scientific and moral dilemmas, not unanswerable questions but ones for which the answer requires more than simply referring to wrote principle.
Note, Rand here does NOT say that it is impossible for a person in the situation to ACT in accordance with rational application of the standard of morality, only that the context does not admit of PRESCRIBED moral principles or codes... whose establishment as mental shorthand is only useful for common general application in common general contexts and in any case would be cripplingly numerous if one were to attempt to write a rule for every situation.
This crucial difference between a principle or rule and the contextual application of morality is illustrated well by the discussion in OPAR surrounding the principle or virtue of honesty.  It is part of the moral code, i.e. "don't lie" it is a moral rule or principle generally applicable because it supports self-interest in the commonest and most general context of -life-.  WE KNOW that one however is not selfishly morally obligated to tell an intruder where the location of one's child is, and in fact we KNOW it is selfishly MORAL to LIE to the intruder to selfishly save a precious value. [[please excuse the redundancy - to be moral is to be selfish]]  But "Why?" asks the rationalist is it moral to LIE?  If lying "is wrong", continues the rationalist, it is always wrong.. isn't it?... or does this simply mean morality itself does not apply when the man lies?  NO it does not.  It means the context for application of the general principle of morality simply is not present... principles are absolute but only in context... this is an exceptional context which requires a man to act in ways in accordance with that exceptional context.  Morality is NOT an intrinsic duty, it is NOT following rules for the sake of following rules. Morality is contextual and the principles are not to be multiplied ad infinitum to take into account every exceptional context.  One cannot literally write out every possible course of action in response to every possible context, determine what serves self-interest and call that a code of morality. It would be a concrete bound crippling mess. 
The standard of morality does not disappear, and rationality can be used to determine (as best one can in the situation) the moral course of action... this IS a moral dilemma not because there is no answer, but because it is not one which is easily arrived at by simple reference to prescribed rules.
The general moral principle of honestly, in the form of "do not lie" does not disappear, it is not applicable in the context.  Morality does not disappear either, not for a man who as chosen life and must choose and act in order to live as best he can.  Here what is moral is "to lie to the intruder to save the your own and or your children's lives"
This is my response to DA and is not to be construed as anything else.
 
I still intend to respond to Louie.

The time during which I most surely influenced some others to embrace a good deal of Rand's philosophy was when I was in college and had recently discovered her writings. I had been led to her novels, then her other writings, by recommendation from a trusted, somewhat older cousin. I did the same, through our discussions of ideas, with some of my classmates and family. That was all about ten years after AS appeared, and frankly, not all that many people had ever heard of Rand or her ideas, notwithstanding the attention it had received in some magazines in those years after AS.
I have one suggestion in direct personal communication with people in our present culture. Just talk about whatever issue has come up in your conversation. Give your view in dialogue and give it, as is natural with you, I bet, in its widening scope to more and more fundamental issues. Don't you reference Ayn Rand or Objectivism to start. Let them notice and mention the connection if they have some acquaintance already with Rand and her philosophy. Keep the main focus on the issue(s) in the dialogue. If they never mention Rand or her philosophy, then you mention its connection pretty late in the conversation. Give your own view, simply your own view of how things work. Say what you think and what you aren't decided on. When you bring up Rand for related thought and their possible reading of Rand, you can mention your overlap and your differences with her on the issues you've been discussing. Don't present your own views as some sort of second fiddle to hers or as if they are talking to her through you, rather than talking to you about the issues and your views on them. I've had a couple of extended conversations with evangelists along this suggested pattern. In the first conversation, I never got to a Rand coda, though the idea of her theory of moral value in the world, in my own expression, was clearly a new vista to the pair who had approached us (my other half Walter and me sitting on the stoop with the infant grandson sleeping in the stroller---so must be about 15 years ago). With a bit more time (and perhaps a less complicated, fewer-talkers exchange), the lead to Rand would have been easy. But of course my focus was on the ideas and communicating about them with these evangelists. In the second conversation, the evangelist was a ministerial student from Liberty University here in Lynchburg. It was at the coin-op laundry. That was very interesting, and at the end, it turned out he had never heard of Rand or her philosophy. I'd say that was about six years ago.
That reminds me, related to a tangent in this thread, that the ministerial student I talked with was Southern Baptist. Most at his school are in that tradition. Ted Cruz is of that faith. I've had a consistently good impression of them concerning bottom-line respect for individual autonomy concerning faith (or not-faith), even if their pushiness sometimes is weak in respect for the judgments of other minds. Sen. Cruz was asked by an atheist at a town-hall meeting a couple of months ago why an atheist, such as the questioner himself, should vote for him. Cruz answered that the man should not vote for him, that he hoped the man would be dissuaded from atheism, and that he Cruz takes the atheist man's right to be atheist and say so to be protected by the US Constitution, which he would surely uphold.

I think there's a difference between writing an article for a general audience and having a conversation with a specific person. If you're writing an article for a general audience, you can be passionate without turning people off, because no one will feel targeted. This is one reason why Rand's articles are so effective.
However, if you're talking to a specific person, it can be advisable to tone things down a bit so that they don't feel attacked, which will turn them off to your ideas. Another issue is that they may have some argument you haven't heard before, which can be a problem if you've made the conversation really intense and passionate. I find it's better to just calmly put my views forward for consideration.
For example, consider this conversation:
A: "I believe in God."
B: "Believing in God is a childish fantasy that no adult should take seriously."
Now, B may be right about all that, but A isn't going to be open to B's arguments from this point on, because A will feel like they are being attacked. A better approach would be to say "Why do you believe in God?" and explore their reasons calmly and civilly, which is the ask and listen method.
I'm not saying you have to coddle every ridiculous point of view, of course, but if it is a view they could have arrived at honestly then it's better to try to hear them out.

PM
Perhaps a clearer definition of what you mean by "material" or what you mean by "immaterial" would be helpful.
Certainly, as you know, Objectivism rejects the supernatural, hence, whatever "immaterial" you are speaking of, it must be natural, possess identity and behave according to causality etc.
You also know that Rand speaks of "life" going out of existence.  Literally disappearing when a living organism dies, whereas the matter remains.
These may be clues to what you could consider material versus "something else".
If you take a person and squish him with a car crusher, you do not have consciousness, nor life, but you do have material.  If you consider there not to have been any loss of "material" by virtue of the squishing, i.e. the material that remains is the same material (at least in terms of amount - no more and no less) that was there before, then something other than mere amount of material was operative/present.
This leads to the question whether or not you take arrangement, processes, function, etc. of material, to be "immaterial" i.e. are the properties, relationships, attributes, functioning which arise from the collective arrangement of a complex collection of material "immaterial" or are they aspects of the collective material which disappear when the arrangements are destroyed.
A car also in a real sense is different in form, arrangement, capacity to function, after it is squished, but its material (in terms of quantity) remains the same, albeit rearranged.
 
Rand held that matter changes forms but does not go out of existence, as does life when a living thing dies.  The same obviously goes for consciousness.
Although I am unsure that she ever stated this explicitly, the idea that somehow life and equally consciousness are due to the form of the matter is implicit in (or at least consistent with if not logically necessitated by) her claim that death is at once an example of matter merely changing form, and of life going out of existence.

I think you're both right.
The outward/political focus versus self-improvement or the pursuit of personal happiness, and also the combative style... though not necessarily so much Rand's (though that's part of the issue), as that of Objectivists who try to ape her style. In my experience, most Objectivists have no idea how to talk to people outside of the Objectivist community, and no apparent desire to try to distinguish those who might be fundamentally open to reason, yet mistaken on one or several points.
How to talk to people, to discuss ideas, to persuade -- both within and outside of Objectivism -- is a topic that is not only under-explored, but is regarded with outright suspicion by some. Some people seem content to pass moral judgement and condemn others to hell, rather than the (admittedly more difficult) project of examining their own methods of communication.
I have found that many Objectivists have the reputation of being "assholes"; so much so that it's arguably regarded as characteristic. I don't think it's even undeserved. But it doesn't have to be so. I've known many utterly pleasant and polite Objectivists, and I see no reason why someone cannot be both correct and nice. Even our expressions of anger, where merited, can stand critical examination and improvement. Above all, I think that empathy is a vital characteristic (I would not go so far as to say that it is a "virtue," because I am not prepared for the argument -- but I'm not dismissing it either).
I've used this analogy before, and I think it still serves: Objectivists have the best product on the market. We have truth. We have reason and reality on our side -- and despite what you may have heard (and despite humanity's checkered history), reason and reality are fairly persuasive forces. They keep all of us alive, every day, and have formed the basis for all of humanity's many achievements. So despite everything we're working against (deeply ingrained cultural forces, including academia, the media, and political institutions), I think Objectivism stands poised to remake the world.
What we need -- what any great product needs -- is sales. We need to examine and re-examine (and re-examine again) our means and methods of communicating our ideas to a world which is frankly starving for reason, for peace, for happiness. We must continue to improve upon our approach until we succeed.

Intelligent people aren't always rational. But I've never been dismissed like that by any rational person. Also, I wasn't born an Objectivist. I became one. I didn't dismiss Objectivism before learning about it. It's just something I wouldn't do, no matter how many people decide to insult it or attack it with fallacious arguments. Why assume that other rational people would?
 
P.S. In general, I really don't think that is how groups necessarily function. I think it takes a specific kind of, very damaged, culture in which most people will react like that to a point of view just because it's tarnished by shallow attacks.
 
I think that in a relatively rational culture people are able to differentiate between substantive criticism and slander, and if they see a point of view being savaged, if anything, they become curious about what it is that upset all the irrational savages. They wouldn't just take the irrational attacks as cause for dismissing their target belief system.
 
I think the guy gives way too much credit to those types of attacks. I'm sure it works with the kind of fringe groups I mentioned above ( the far left and religious fundamentalists), but the main reason why Objectivism is unpopular with normal, reasonable people is because of what it is, not because of any of the lies obsessed bloggers spread about Ayn Rand. Objectivism is radical philosophy that contradicts pretty much everything most people believe about morality and politics. It's a tough sell, with or without the idiots calling Ayn Rand names.
 
Let's put it this way: it wasn't Ayn Rand's slanderers who went on o'Reilly and said that according to Objectivism nuking Tehran should be a tactical option available to the military (or whatever was said exactly). It was Leonard Peikoff. And, in my opinion at least, it was a pretty accurate representation of Objectivism. It was a mistake to say it, because it's not something most Americans are ready to hear, but it's not like it's not true. And I bet that single TV appearance turned off more people to Objectivism than all the slanderous articles put together.

This second method is (hopefully) an attempt to use Mill's methods to find a possible general cause, 'general' in the sense that it is a generalization attributing a new characteristic to a concept; it deals with abstractions.  All particular specific events (such as a Jack throwing a ball, which imparts new energy and momemtum to the ball, which subsequently causes a glass window to shatter when the ball's trajectory intersects with the spatial extension of the window) are instances of causality; causality applies to concretes.

That depends on the context.  English uses include the things which are involved in a process, those things which were present in their states prior to the process, being the "causes".  English also uses "cause" as a term denoting the process itself... the things in their states prior to the process "cause" the process and also the end states and things after the process.  The term cause also denotes a temporal relationship of necessity, the things present in their first state caused the process to occur, the processed occurring caused the things in their end states... BUT FOR A, B would not have occurred, i.e. A is in relation to B as its cause.
Really cause is just a label for the entities, the actions they take,  and relationships they have... in reality
A is A and B is B and in the context, A and B interact, and C results.
C can be A and B in different states, or a destroyed A or B or something neither A nor B, all of it would be in accordance with the nature of the entities.
If your subconscious starts to look for it... there is not cause for causation.
 

If I follow you correctly, this is still a problem. You are saying that there are first things that exist that don't necessarily act. However, by virtue of existing, they will inevitably act. In this way, actions are attributes that "hang onto" entities and those actions are only there as a consequence (or "by accident"). It's the reverse of platonic action you described: a platonic form of existence, from which numerous actions will spring.
I know somewhere in ITOE Rand commented on that idea, namely to say it's wrong. I'll find it for you. The point was along the lines of what Grames said above. I see this as existence and identity are the same thing essentially, and inseparable. If something exists, that means it is acting, always. Simultaneously. 

Of related interest is a remark of Harry Binswanger in his 2014 book: “When one billiard ball collides with another and sets it in motion, the interaction is causally determined by the nature of the entities involved, including their state of motion” (HWK 347–48). By state of motion, he means such things as velocity and spin. It is odd to regard such things as part of the nature of a thing. To be sure, it is part of the nature of a thing to be possible for it to have or not to have such states and, if so, in certain possible ranges of magnitudes of those states (magnitudes of spin, magnitudes of linear velocity). But the actual values of those traits at hand are attributes, and removable ones, not natures of the billiard balls. That is not to say that all actual attributes of entities are not part of what we ordinarily mean by natures of the entities. The elasticity of the balls, an attribute whose magnitude is invariant for ordinary billiard balls, is more aptly called part the balls’ nature in the collision.

Sorry, I meant Objectivist and non Objectivist. Like when you go into a philosophy discussion group and most have never heard of Ayn Rand. Most everyone is interested in causation. They want to know what will happen in the future. Causal connections are the key, non-Objectivists believe that too. Knowing causal connections allows you to be able to plan, to survive. It is a practical and important issue to people. Most people think of a cause being something that HAS TO proceed something else. This is very different from Ayn Rand's "meaning".
 

In your example there is a chain of causation which you can describe in a multitude of ways. 
You and the switch are not monolithic singularities, you and the switch are complex systems, and together you can be epistemologically seen as a system also.
Your brain causes impulses which case muscles in your arm to contract which cause your arm to move in relation to your torso and your finger to move in relation... etc... causing the tip of your finger to rotate a switch about its pivot causing one contact to touch another contact allowing a current to flow through a wire to a light causing the filament to get hot and produce light...
You can slice and dice the systems umpteen ways and break down the complex chain of causation in umpteen ways.  i.e. describe this in many different ways.  What happened, happened it is  what it is regardless of how you analyze it... and always going back to what it was can be helpful.
So yes, you (broadly speaking)  did cause the light to go on.  But the light had to be there, it had to be operational (not broken), the power had to be on and ready to be connected by the light switch, the switch had to work, etc. all of these are conditions for the light actually going on. 
The light switch, and its presence, did not cause you to turn it on... although arguably its presence was a condition precedent to your deciding to do so.
In the subquote of Rand "The nature of an action is caused and determined by the nature of the entities that act" it's best that you not focus on the word "caused" but the word "determined", especially of you take it out of context of the rest of the explanation.  Entities act, those actions are caused by entities, how they act is determined by the nature of the entities. 
Causation is not "caused", it is a part of reality. Actions are caused by entities.
Also think about what you take to be an action.  An action as opposed to a property or a attribute implies some change, a difference of some state of something over time.  A thing simply being, i.e. having mass or filling space is not an action.  As such simple being does not require a cause, a thing simply is, existence is identity.
Why do we have a require a concept of causation?  Only because of change, something being different from what it was.  Change only presupposes causes.  The law of causation simply links the nature and specific types of changes to the nature of the entities which bring them about.  The changes are determined by the nature of the things acting.

SL, what about the case of hot sand at the beach? It seems sensible to say the hotness of the sand burned my feet. I could say the sand burned my feet, but it would be understood that it was heat of the sand that did the burning.